Path into Sunset
by D.K. Archer
Summary: Cortez/Tzekel Khan slash, written for a challenge, set after the movie but before Aztec wars. Now complete! Please r/r


Path into Sunset   
by D.K. Archer

**Rating:** PG-13   
**Rated for**: slash, blood, and violence   
**Pairing**: Cortez/Tzekel Khan (answer to a challenge)   
**Disclaimer: **I don't own any characters from the movie. If I did, I wouldn't be working minimum wage as a housekeeper. ;)   
**-----**   
**Notes**: I made some assumptions about El Dorado mythology. The vast pantheon of the aztecs was apparently diminished in their isolation down to two gods, who I think would be Huitzilopochtl and Tezcatlipoca. Since Huitzilopochtl is the god to whom the majority of sacrifices was given and the god of war, I decided that Cortez gets to be Huitzilopochtl. And since Tzekel Khan thinks he's Huitzilopochtl, whenever the text leans towards Tzekel Khan's perspective, Cortez will be referred to as Huitzilopochtl. On the rare occasion the text is towards Cortez's perspective, he gets to be called Cortez. Got it? Good. ^_^ 

In another note, this story is about as historically accurate as George Washington's wooden teeth. The approach on Tenochtitlan was nothing like this. But it's a fanfic to a historically inaccurate movie, so it's okay.   
Nahuatl words are as follows:   
calpolli: Nobles, of a sort.   
pochteca: merchants   
ollamalizti: a lethal game played with solid rubber balls. Tulio and Miguel played a bastardized version of it in the movie.   
----- 

The heavens painted themselves into bright streaks and lines, slowly matting out the stars in broad brushstrokes of pink, orange, yellow and red. The wet leaves of the forest canopy glowed in recognition of the dawn and stretched out before him in a near perfect landscape, bumbling and rising as the ground did and shifting with newly awakened lives. So very far off in the distance, so far only the barest hints of form rose up over the horizon, the faintly outlined tip of the teocalli shone over the trees, it's temple atop blurred away by the colors of the sun. That was where they were going, that city. He couldn't tell them what it was called, but somehow he knew that they would go through the gates uncontested, could march to the center of the town and demand what they liked of the calpolli, be it men, supplies, or their hearts themselves. No one would complain. Who would dare to? 

Tzekel Khan paused to listen as a burst of scornful laughter came from the soldiers as they readied to move out behind him. He turned his face from the vista to see what had them so entertained, but whatever it was had already passed, and these men laughed at strange things, anyway. He watched them scatter the ashes of the campfires some ways down the point. It had been a stupid place to camp, up high on the cliffs, above the cover of the trees; "A defensible point" as the captain had called it, but it did nothing more than than promote the fact they were, for what was more obvious than fires against the sky? 

At the line of the trees the thick wolf hounds with their studded throats yipped and bit at each other in the drifting ashes, covering their hides with a dusting of white. The horses danced away nervously when the beasts came too close. They were wise animals indeed. 

_"So you like my dog, eh? She certainly like YOU."_

_Tzekel Khan backed away slowly, the dogs' keeper letting out the line on it's throat inch by inch as it lunged, snarling, threatening to overbalance the man's massive frame. Pacing the corners of the firelight, the other dogs were working themselves to excitement, weaving in and out of the legs of the soldiers who watched eagerly the spectacle. The priest's retreat ended as his leg caught the scattered effects and he fell with a painful crack to the stone aside the boots of the men. He had fallen at the feet of Huitzilopochtl. That bearded face stared down at him without concern, dark eyes calculating._

_The dogs let go a shriek as the wolfhound slipped it's bindings, oblivious to the cheering of the men. Tzekel Khan bellowed and threw his arms over his face, those yellow teeth baring down on him, dulled claws coming to bare on his chest._

_"HOLD!" Huitzilopochtl shouted. The order was repeated by the dog keeper and his thick hands got hold the beast's collar, staying the snarling, trembling mass of sinew and fur that straddled the priest's body. With every breath it huffed the jaws before Tzekel Khan's face twitched._

_Huitzilopochtl knelt and scratched the dog's bristled head with a foul sort of smile. "Do you see what happens when you lie to me?" he said calmly. "Tell me how to get to El Dorado."_

_Tzekel Khan forced himself to breathe and not to stare at the dog's fangs as though they were the last sight he would ever see. He focused on the alien visage of the armored Huitzilopochtl and tried to calm his mind, to remember who he was at the mercy of. He couldn't afford to make himself useless._

_"My Lord," he said, breath shaking under the constant focus of the wolf hound "Surely there's other evil in the world, other cities which can be punished for their disloyalty!" the dog growled and he flinched, feeling it's saliva on his neck. "The Tenochca are only a day's journey away, a town large enough to give you blood until El Dorado is starved out of hiding."_

_"And what would they have of interest to me?" he asked, stroking the wolfhound. "Why should I go to this city?"_

_Clenching his fists to resist the urge to squirm, Tzekel Khan swallowed against the dog's teeth and said clearly, "They have gold."_   


In a massive voice the order was called to move out, the sound repeated as all men took to their feet. Tzekel Khan stared with only partial comprehension at the unfamiliar command. Backs turned to him as they began a paced file down from the point, and the priest finally chased after them, bare feet rough on the cold stone. To Tzekel Khan's determent he was somewhat shorter than most of the soldiers and did not make for much impact trying to weave through them, but his target was easy enough to spot, high on horseback at the front of the route. He ducked through the frontal bar of horsemen and fell into step beside Huitzilopochtl's mount, a dark thing that couldn't be spared the trouble to notice him. 

Two eyes glanced down at him with cool detachment, entirely unsurprised by his appearance. His lip twitched up into a partial sneer. 

"You're bleeding." he said flatly. 

An expression of disgust overcame his face as the priest pinched his earlobes experimentally, staring at the spot of blood that came away on his right hand. He'd sewn them shut again with horsehair and a canvas needle while the men had prepared the camp for night (much to the entertainment of the soldier who had given him the needle, unfortunately). They had no real reason to be bleeding now. Huitzilopochtl faced himself forward and stared into the path with absolute focus, as though the horse couldn't steer on it's own, and Tzekel Khan took the hint. He bowed his head in submission to the whims of the gods and fell back into the vein of horsemen, pinching his torn flesh between thumb and knuckle to try and quell the steady leak. 

He was very nearly smiling. 

At pace slightly behind him, a soldier on a thick grey mare nudged her forward a few steps quicker than the others, pausing at steady gait beside the priest. Tzekel Khan glanced up at him, barely registering the paler, unshaven face from all the others. This one looked down on him as one might a spider, mere moments before one crushed it. 

"I see you've found yourself in quite the position." he sneered, knotting the horses reigns on his hand. "Despite what the captain may think, not ALL of the men were asleep last night. Especially not after the noise you made." 

Tzekel Khan returned the gaze, unfazed "Should that concern me?" 

"You're leading the captain down the road to his own damnation." he replied simply, as though it should be the most obvious thing in the world. The mare flipped her head in frustration at the strands of hair that were coming loose from her carefully knotted mane, and the soldier tugged the cord lightly to stop her. He leaned down until his face was only inches from Tzekel Khan's. "The captain is a decent and powerful man. So long as there's the strength in me to kill you, I won't let you drag his soul to whatever dark circle of hell you're bound for." 

Tzekel Khan stared, not understanding that in the least. The soldier pulled back up to his height and stuck the priest with a warning glare before weaving his horse into the mounted men, immediately striking up a conversation with the closest as though nothing had happened at all. Tzekel Khan looked after him with confusion and rubbed absently at the ripped flesh where his earrings once had been. It had stopped bleeding.   


_He was already tied wrist to elbow in preparation for the march when Huitzilopochtl ordered the gold be taken from him. It was the hound's keeper who had tied him and the same man who was closest to the task, though his hands were heavy and gloved in leather, making them both insensate and clumsy. He tried for a few second to pull the clasp but he wasn't familiar with the means and it was too small for his fingers. He finally grunted with frustration, grabbed the head of it, and pulled._

_They hadn't come out all at once. Tzekel Khan had bared his teeth as the skin pulled and split open, and was unable to keep in a pained noise when the tissues ripped messily, and the earring came away in the dog keeper's hand. He could feel the blood begin a halting path down his jaw in one red line._

_The soldier stepped to the other side of him and tore the second piece free without the trouble of attempting the clasp. It was swifter now that he knew how much force to exert but the swift motion gave no time for a neat, straight tear like the other did; his flesh tore at the weakest point, and the blood started down far quicker than the other. The dogs keeper held his hand out to Huitzilopochtl, who had gone white across the brow, and dropped the gold carelessly into his palm. It seemed such a paltry amount against so large a man._

_"What are we going to do with Him?" one of the soldiers asked, pointing to Tzekel Khan with his chin._

_Huitzilopochtl paused his response for a moment, watching the blood slip down over the priest's collar bone. Tzekel Khan couldn't help but smirk._

_"He's coming with us. If he's lied again, we'll kill him." He glanced over the soldiers, looking for the collared dogs that wandered between their legs. "Or we'll let Hagar take care of him."_

_The largest dog looked up on hearing her name, ears twitching. Tzekel Khan flinched. That was the beast they had set upon him earlier._

_"Tie a rope around his neck and pull him behind your horse. If he stumbles, drag him."_

_"Yes, captain." one of the men Tzekel Khan was beginning to recognize as a horsemen replied, giving a curt nod. A length of rope was tossed between men and a loop was thrown over his head, tightened, and tied. The horseman gave the line a tug and Tzekel Khan fell face first into the dirt._

_"Come on, savage. You get to be my pet for the day."_

_In the noise of the beginning journey, no one else saw as Huitzilopochtl brought an earring up to his lips. It was the most discrete of movements; his tongue darting out along the post, smudged as it was with blood, his eyelids flickering briefly. He'd hidden the action even as he had done it, and glanced around quickly to be sure no one had seen. A thin glisten of sweat was apparent along his hairline._

_The priest didn't just smirk now. He grinned._

_Huitzilopochtl looked away._

Some few thousand yards from the cliffs where they had camped the foliage gave way to the curling body of a road, winding, well trodden, and undoubtably occupied by no small number of women and pochteca's workers traversing towns to trade in other markets. As the trees' thinning became apparent, Huitzilopochtl turned the trail of soldiers to follow right and parallel to the treaded path, a distance enough that their tramping feet were lost in the muffling of the jungle, but close that they should not loose their way in the dense undergrowth. It was like the turning of a vast centipede, the tail end still walking the old path while the head turned itself towards the new. The body thinned and stretched notably as men now walked in trails of one of two together. 

No one argued as the dogs pranced along the entire length of the centipede. Their keeper had long since given up the pretense of leashes and binds, at least as far as travel was concerned. They were generally intelligent enough beasts not to go dashing off into the undergrowth by themselves, though there had been instances before, apparently, when Hagar and an aptly named Mephisto went darting off after some witless creature that had not had the sense to remove itself from the path of the soldiers. The hounds keeper claimed that Hagar had once led him to the corpse of a heathen man that she had slain and eaten from, and though this wasn't a story that was impossible by the standards of war dogs it wasn't one that the other soldiers readily attested. It was common knowledge that most of these beasts were trained to kill and had killed before, but on this journey so far they had experienced oddly little combat, and the bloodless state of their jaws was to be expected. 

The dogs were not well liked by all the men, however. They were known for their nasty temperaments and riotous bloodlust whenever it was given opportunity to be slaked. Tzekel Khan held particularly little love for them. In El Dorado the only dogs he had seen were cut into pieces and eaten, at equal standing with the vile turkeys that he'd never liked. They were lowly and despicable animals. The very fact that the order of consumption seemed to be reversed in this band was enough to put him on edge, but the attentions of the dog called Hagar were particularly disturbing. Since she had been given the command to stop when they had set her on him she had seemed to think that she had been denied something that was her right. Whenever he sought her out in the pack she was found to be staring right at him with utter disregard, and ever since he had fallen back from the horses in the march she seemed to be trailing him. He could tell it was her because none of the other beasties were quite so large as she was, nor bore ears so marked by fighting. 

He attempted to ignore her for what felt the longest time. The priest made point of staring at the ground where he would walk (for practicality as much as distraction, for even calloused feet bled openly when misguided) but the nerves at the back of his neck kept warning him to look behind and keep the position of his stalker. Nearly an hour passed before he gave into the urge and turned to see her ugly head. 

But she wasn't there. 

Tzekel Khan scanned the trail of men behind him for the dog, but her matted bulk wasn't anywhere among them. He warily turned his face forward again and slitted his eyes, knowing something wasn't quite right. Even if she had given up her past time she should have at least stayed with the cluster of the beasts, but she wasn't.....the exact implications of that struck his mind at the moment he heard something snap in the bushes beside him. She wasn't trailing behind anymore. She Was. Right.There. 

His eyes went a little wider and he shifted discretely back from the edge of the trampled path, trying to at least put a soldier between himself and the bushes. It did no good. As soon as her discovery became apparent, a curve of white teeth shown themselves in the leaves and the smudged grey muzzle followed. Her thick shoulders hunched, and even as he bolted forward into the line his stalker exploded from the greenery with a mess of snarling, spittle covered teeth. The path was blocked by the backs of soldiers who didn't know what he was running from, and soon he did the only thing he really had left to do. Tzekel Khan turned against the flow to face the bristling wolfhound. 

Hagar jumped for his throat.   


_As the stone of the distant teocalli rose over the horizon line, Tzekel Khan nearly laughed with relief. Some nasty panic in his chest had bickered with him all day that there was likely no city this direction, and he was leading them astray again; this time would be his last. He knew quite intimately the death that lay in store for him when Huitzilopochtl became truly and finally angry with him. He'd had nightmares of such a death for years when the old high priest had told him to come and pin the wrists of the sacrifice, and not to let go even when the screaming stopped. It had been a boy no older than he was, and the man had screamed and cried and begged them to stop, but as soon as the obsidian knife pushed into his skin it had only been screaming. The priests and those in training like himself were trying to drown it out, but he was too close for their bellowing to mute it. Soon enough the screaming gurgled and died, the jaw locked open into it's permanent position, and the high priest dropped a ball of red meat into the basin at their feet. All that screaming had come down to nothing but a heart._

_That night he had screamed just as loudly as the boy, waking all the novices in the quarters, for he himself had lain in dreams staring up at the obsidian knife. And he did so for many, many nights after. Now his mind saw his back pinned to the stone his feet stood on, and Huitzilopochtl's bearded maw tearing into his heart even as he himself stopped screaming with death. It wasn't an image he had enjoyed creating._

_The ropes binding his arms had been slashed at Huitzilopochtl's command. He had watched with distant uselessness as they built their fires and set into hard tack and dried meat, and the dogs wandered off to kill. Except for Hagar. She lay her heavy head down on her paws and stared eagerly as Tzekel Khan rubbed ashes into his wounds, and stitched those same ears with a needle thick enough to do as much harm as good. She kept staring even as the rest of the pack came back, bouncing and sated and nipping at each other's heels. And she stared as the men ceased their activities and lay on the stone for their much needed sleep._

_Tzekel Khan hadn't slept.The nervous grinding in his gut was only amplified by it's emptiness, and while hunger wasn't something he paid any mind to anymore, the itching feeling of fear and even vague anticipation was the sort that had kept him awake many nights in El Dorado. He sat with his back to the sheer drop of the cliff side, his face turned away from the heavens and that unknown city. The moon hung an immobile sliver of tin somewhere above, and reflected itself so neatly on the polished surfaces of knives and buckles and the glistening bits of horse rein. Even in eyes. And such eyes there were, only a single set, wide and patient and beastial. Hagar could wait until the end of the world should she wish to, but even as the thought occurred to him, he shuddered at the knowledge that she had so very little time for patience. The end of the world was already upon them._   
__

The dog's frame struck his chest with the force of an ollamalizti ball and her teeth were suspended, snapping, mere inches from his face. Having struck the ground, he didn't even realize his hands were against that studded collar shoving back on her, the iron spikes delving into his flesh. It was confusion: some men were cheering, some shouting, but it was all noise he couldn't hear in those seconds her wet teeth hung maliciously over his throat. Tzekel Khan rolled, dislodging her position, but she was up from her back again in the merest blink of a moment and flying. 

To his credit, the hound keeper's reaction was very swift. His hands caught her collar in mid jump, wringing a strangled little shriek from her throat, and knocked her to her side, straddling her. She wretched her head about, trying to bring her teeth to bare on his leather guarded hands and clawed at him with blunt paws. The priest backed away, right into a soldier; Hagar saw his retreat, and was not to be denied so easily again. She bucked her keeper off with the ease her massive size afforded and charged at the priest, an infuriated mass of teeth and tendon. Tzekel Khan ripped the knife from the indignant soldier's belt and slashed with no skill and no precision at her as she crossed the distance between earth and throat. The leap fumbled as she twisted in mid air, striking the priest broadside and knocking him (and the soldier behind him) to an undignified tangle on the ground. 

Hagar scrambled away from the mess before Tzekel Khan could even think of another strike. She hunched down into a huffing snarl, a good six feet from them, leaving enough time for the priest to regain his footing, and the soldier to swear at him quite fluently as he came to his legs. 

"WHATS GOING ON HERE!?" bellowed a familiar and authoritative voice. Nearly the entire line had stopped moving in the brief span of the struggle, and shoved to the side unwillingly as the heavy hooves of Huitzilopochtl's mount came storming through them. The shrieking dogs that had begun to circle fled back between the legs of the men. Tzekel Khan dropped the knife and backed away. 

The horse stopped itself in the space between priest and dog and it's rider eyed them both distastefully, eyes narrowing. 

"Have you killed my dog, heathen?" 

Tzekel Khan looked up at him in confusion, lost somewhere between adrenaline and ignorance. "My lord?" 

The dog's keeper had moved between Huitzilopochtl and the snarling beast, staying distant enough to stay safe. He squatted down to get a better look beneath her growling head. 

"She's dead no matter what we do." he snapped angrily. "The heathen's cut her from chin to shoulder. Even if she doesn't bleed to death she'll never keep pace." 

Huitzilopochtl sneered "And she was supposed to be the BEST wardog you've trained?" 

Tzekel Khan stepped aside of Huitzilopochtl's horse to see what they meant, and indeed, the hound keeper had spoken truth. Her eyes followed him angrily and her jaw trembled; her muscular shoulders were tensed as though she would leap on him; but it seemed not a possibility, for the fur from her throat to her leg was seeping red at a most lethal rate. 

The priest didn't see and had no warning as Huitzilopochtl flexed his hand thoughtfully, and brought it back with a crack against Tzekel Khan's jaw. The man reeled with the surprise of it and stared, eyes wide. 

"Get his hands, tie them behind him." Huitzilopochtl ordered flatly. "If he can't be trusted to keep order, my horse will keep it for him." 

Tzekel Khan let a small noise of protest as two soldiers took hold of him roughly from behind, pulling his arms back until the joints whined at the treatment. Moments later the rough rope had found its way to him and been tied in that position, the line looped over his throat once and knotted so his forearms pulled against it, constricting his breathing enough to cause discomfort, but not injury. He was shoved in front of the horse, who seemed to know this situation. The beast moved close behind him and marched him with the threat of heavy hooves 

"MOVE!" Huitzilopochtl shouted at his men. And they obeyed. Tzekel Khan looked over his shoulder to catch what he could of the beast that had attacked him. Hagar was staring at the men with uncomfortable confusion until giving up her posture, and starting out with a limp to follow the line. She quickly fell behind and out of view. Tzekel Khan grinned to himself, and marched forward towards the city without remorse.   
__

_It was a shifting ocean of flesh around islands of red burning embers, breathing softly without a standard measure. The moon had pulled itself upward in the sky and was creeping towards it's descending path. Tzekel Khan hadn't moved since the color had gone, and the same could be said for his observer, who's eyes had not seemed to even blink through the entire course of darkness. The camp was in darkness save for the warring dimness of celestial bodies and dozing coals, one lighting the body silver from above and the other tinting red from below. It was quiet now. For the beginning of the night men had shifted restlessly, snorers were prodded into silence, and beasts raised their heads with quick alarm at every motion in the darkness of the trees. He remembered sleeping in cramped quarters at the temple while he trained. Most would slip to silent sleep as quickly as they lay their head; others shifted uncomfortably the entire night. Only on exhausting days would the quarters fall to such strange quiet as the camp now kept.___

_Tzekel Khan was the only human wakeful to see the sudden turbulence in a sleeping sea. A body near the fires twitched and rolled over. It seemed content for a moment, but soon enough flipped to it's other side, bearded mouth pulled into a grimace even as Huitzilopochtl still slept. The priest watched with a furrowed brow as the god jerked and suddenly froze, two wide mirrors for the vain moon opening in his head. Huitzilopochtl was awake. His body sat up and he put a palm to his forehead, breath seeming oddly difficult. Did he battle the forces of night, even now, at the end of the world? Or did he suffer a more mortal dilemma? Huitzilopochtl covered his face with his hands and leaned forward onto the ground.___

_Hagar's head rose warily and he saw her muscles twitch as the priest rose, never quite bringing himself to a stand, but stepped quietly with a hunched back across the scattered mass of the soldiers. He paused some distance from Huitzilopochtl and went down to a hand and knee to watch. The god slowly rubbed his brow and turned his eyes to the liquid pool of embers like a scryer to his basin. His face was so carefully blank.___

_Tzekel Khan crept across the sleeping bodies until he was only a few yards away, when he let his footsteps become audible, pausing there. Huitzilopochtl's head snapped towards him at the sound, and stared as the priest slunk down to his level.___

_"My Lord." Tzekel Khan said quietly, ducking his head to the stone in reverence.___

_Huitzilopochtl glared "What do you want?" he asked, a sneer in his voice if not his face.___

_"To serve you." He raised his head and watched the blank eyes. "My Lord, do you fight the powers of the darkness even now? When you have come to destroy the world?"___

_There was a moment of dangerous silence."Yes." he said finally, quietly. "I fight 'the powers of darkness'"___

_"Have you defeated them?"___

_He didn't answer. His blank eyes watched a moment and turned themselves back towards the fire.___

_Tzekel Khan blinked. Never before had Huitzilopochtl failed to vanquish the night, never before had he not cleared the way for the sun to rise from it's sleeping death. To that end spilled the blood down the steps of the temple each morning, and to that end the hearts of men and boys were given up to the sky. So it had been since the city's construction, and so it had been until the false gods had given their decree to the people of El Dorado.___

_There had been no blood today. Tzekel Khan knew his priests; he knew their blindness to all which was not set before them on a codex page and he knew they would not question the words of the false gods.___

_Cortez saw movement from the corner of his eye, and turned his head to see the heathen drawing his knife from the ground where it lay. He thought he was going to have to kill the fool. But he didn't turn the knife to the spaniard; the man instead lay open his palm and drew the blade across the heel, splitting the vein and letting the blood trickle down to his finger tip.___

_Tzekel Khan set the knife aside. Huitzilopochtl's face had gone white, his eyes fixed on the claret trail. The priest raised his hand in offering. There was a moment of flickered indecision, but then Huitzilopochtl's eyes darkened with rage and his mouth pulled up into a growling sneer. Before Tzekel Khan was even sure what had happened, his head snapped back with the force of a blow and he lay on the ground staring up at the bearded visage of Huitzilopochtl. The god was contorted with a terrible rage and his hands clenched in angry fists at his sides, his chest heaving with his fury. Tzekel Khan put his unmarred hand to his mouth and stared as it came away. His lip was bleeding. Huitzilopochtl's eyelids twitched as the blood tripped down his chin.___

_"You're a demon, aren't you." he snarled. "Sent to tempt me. Sent to tear me from the righteous path!" He knelt and his hands were around the priest's throat, threatening to crush the tissues, and Tzekel Khan clawed his arm with the instinctive need for self preservation. The wounded hand left prints of smeared blood up Huitzilopochtl's forearm, and the god snapped back as though it were burning him, staring at the blood with a vacant expression of horror.___

_Tzekel Khan was occupied with his own gasping for breath, his efforts further impeded when a heavy hand crushed down on his chest, pinning him there to the ground. The other hand locked a violent grip around his wrist and pulled it up, bringing the slit flesh to the bearded mouth, and Tzekel Khan stopped struggling. Huitzilopochtl drew the blood from his with an expression somewhere between pleasure and misery, working the wound until the blood began to clot, despite him. He slowly let the hand fall back to the stone, and stared for a moment at the priest who lay pinned under him smirking, despite the drying blood cracking along his mouth.___

_Cortez slowly lowered his head, eyes shutting tight with the force of his own humiliation, and took the bloodied mouth with his own. The heathen conceded his will without a moment's hesitation.___

_At the edge of the camp, Hagar started to growl._   
__

The trees of the forest dropped away dramatically and Tzekel Khan paused, earning himself a dangerous brush from the hooves of Huitzilopochtl's horse. They had reached the cleared land by the shores of a lake, and across it's muddied bulk the teocalli and temple they had seen from the distance rose above a city so vast even Huitzilopochtl seemed to stand in Awe. At the mouth of the man made road, a row of guards stood in white faced terror, clad in the garments of the Jaguar warriors. Behind their spears, a gathering of pale citizens carrying heavy loads of gifts and tribute stood with unblinking eyes, flanked on the sides by the feathered Eagles. 

Huitzilopochtl approached the passage alone, the long line of soldiers being halted by a repeating order that left the great mass of them still concealed in the forest. Tzekel Khan stood at the edge of the trees and felt his mouth pulling into a wide grin, even as the warriors set into long, recited strands of nahuatl and one of the citizens, a girl too young to be married, came forward on her knees with the first piece of the tribute. She dropped the feather work cape at the god's feet and scrambled back in terror, the boy behind her moving to take her place. 

Barely hidden by the trees, Tzekel Khan saw a blunt, blood crusted nose point into the clearing, set in front of beastial eyes he knew all to well. Her fur a tangled and drying mess of blood and insects, Hagar turned her head toward him with a gaze void of all lucidity. He grinned at her as her legs gave out, dropping her scarred head to the ground with an audible whuff, as the Tenochca gave their last willing appeasement to the gods. 

The end of the world had come. 

-------fin-------   


(please review! I'll love you forever.) 


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